I’m currently studying naming practices in 7 countries on a Watson Fellowship. I’m curious how names are defined both by the individuals who bear them and their cultural and historical contexts. The process of naming a child is shaped by considerations that include religious traditions, government restrictions, family history, and cultural icons. I'm interested in how names act as microcosms for societal questions of identity on an international scale.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Watson By Numbers

Greetings from PEI, Canada, where I've spent a sliver of every summer since I was five.

I just realized I never posted a
12-month Watsoversary. There was a lot going on.

During
my 11th and 12th months abroad, I saw a free outdoor
performance of Of Monsters and Men. I
picked lupines on the side of the highway and figured out the Reykjavik bus
system. I ate roast lamb at the homes of two different Icelandic families, I
met with the former chair of the national naming committee. I stayed out until 5am and
discovered eerily sunlit nightlife, went to a gallery opening, rode Icelandic
horses. I received an Icelandic sweater (lopapeysa) as a gift and interviewed
Iceland’s first female priest. I visited a summer home in
Thingvellir that was full of red wine and patriotic singalongs. I visited the Blue Lagoon, tried (and gagged
on) rotten shark, said my goodbyes. I came home.

I’m now
somewhere between month 12 and month 13, because, as we learned/realized at the
Watson conference last week, your Watson begins when you start applying and you’re
on it for the rest of your life. The only difference is that after a year, the
money runs out.

The
returning fellows conference in Wisconsin made for some of the most wonderfully
intense days of my life. I was humbled to be in the company of such smart
and innovative people; so caught up in the warmth and kindness that emanated
from every room I walked into. Between the forty of us, we covered seventy-one
countries this year. Since the founding of the fellowship in 1968, there have
been over 2700 Watson fellows--we are now in their midst.I got to see some of the faces behind the
foundation, learn more about how the fellowship works, and hear about Thomas
J. Watson, Sr. himself. I met many former
Watson fellows and listened to how this experience has continued to affect them
(some in more direct ways than others) throughout their lives.

I was deeply honored to be in the company of such incredible people.

This is the ONE photo I remembered to take during the conference...right before the opening cocktail reception with 2 of my roommates: Jessica Emory & Keren Yohannes.

I think
I can speak for all forty of us when I say that the conference helped us talk
about our experiences in a way we hadn’t really wanted to (or knew how to) before. We were surrounded by people who not only understood the last year, but
had lived it. Conversation topics ranged from digestive problems and bodily
fluids to romance to language slips to serendipity, to the guilt that a lot of
us were carrying. Guilt that comes from being a person of privilege meeting and
living with people without many of the same privileges, and
guilt that arises in our own country as we realize we had this $25,000
experience for our own personal development, and aren’t quite sure what to do
with this gift.

After the conference...a group of us killing time at the Appleton airport. What a joy it was to travel WITH people.

One of the things we gained from
the conference (besides great conversation, shirts and water bottles), was a
little red book with each of our photos and project descriptions. At the front,
the foundation writes about the Watson as a year of “transformational exposure, intellectual entrepreneurship and
experiential learning that contributes deeply to their [fellows] becoming more
humane and effective participants in the world community.”

We talked
a lot about what this means and how we’ll all arrive at our own, individual,
and often ambiguous answers.People are
always somewhat shocked when I tell them there is no pressure to “produce”
anything from the Watson; but in some ways, I wonder if the lack of this
requirement makes us more thoughtful about defining one for ourselves. This might mean writing more about our research,
looking for jobs with international aid organizations, or just living more
thoughtful, examined lives in the U.S. I
know even if I do nothing further with this name research, my Watson
experiences are going to profoundly shape how I see the world for the rest of
my life. I will be a different kind of thinker, a different kind of writer, a
different kind of daughter, a different kind of parent, all because of the
journey I was lucky enough to take.

Reunited with my beloved friend, Hadley, who came to visit me on PEI. She is a person who understands me like no other, and who is about to take a year-long journey to Amman, Jordan. I can only hope I can be as transcontinentally supportive, loving, and hilarious for her as she was for me. I am so excited for what lies ahead. (But in the future let's work on being in the same country at the same time).

I’m
still working on coming to terms with the past year, with what a gift it was,
with how I will somehow merge who I am at home with who I was over the last
twelve months. I’ll be home in Vermont with my parents over the coming weeks
(months?) going over these questions and making lots of trips to see the people
I’ve loved and missed. I’m taking it one step at a time. I have a final report
due to the foundation in a few weeks that I’ll share with you then. I’m sure it will
be full of more reflections and conclusions than I’m capable of making right
now (I have, after all, only been back for 2 weeks—a good chunk of which has
been spent at the returning fellows conference and, now, in Prince Edward
Island, Canada…) Here is what I do know, some broken down pieces of a
monumental year:

Watson By Numbers:

Days spent outside of the United States: 365

Blog posts: 163 (this makes 164)

Project country where I spent the most money on food:
Ireland

Project country where I spent the least money on food: India

Visits to the hospital: 1

Broken kindles: 2

Broken cameras: 1

Packages of stuff mailed home: 7

Items Stolen: 0

Number of Project Countries: 7 (8 if we count Northern
Ireland as the United Kingdom)

Longest Time in a Project Country: 55 days (Tie between India and
Morocco)

Shortest Time in a Project Country: 35 days (Germany...if I count Ireland and Northern Ireland as the same country).

About Me

I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2011 as an English Literature/Theater Major. From July 2011 to July 2012 I'll be traveling to seven different countries on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study naming practices around the world (www.watsonfellowship.org). You can reach me at nell.a.bangjensen@gmail.com.